It’s time to stop the People’s Boondoggle. The grassroots effort to launch a citywide monorail service was well intended, fueled by not only optimism and idealism but frustration with the region’s big-project approach to transportation, which has either given mass transit short shrift (let’s widen Interstate 405 and state Route 520) or has botched expensive megaprojects that failed to meet their original goals (light rail’s trail to Tukwila).
The Seattle Monorail Project gained in popularity as it was seen as “not Sound Transit.” Indeed, for most monorailers, “Sound Transit” is, rightly, a dirty word. It represents conventional thinking with yesterday’s technology. It is disruptive and expensive; it’s been poorly planned and budgeted and arrogantly managed. And it will deliver less for more money.
The monorail was supposed to be different. Innovative, sleek, managed and budgeted with safeguards for the public investment, populist in its embrace of the ideas of the citizenry, quick on its feet. Publicly funded, privately run. It was to be on time, be on budget, and deliver more than promised. When monorail proponents said it would “rise above it all,” they were implying more than skimming through the air. They claimed a kind of moral superiority over Sound Transit and the unstoppable bureaucracy that grew around it, paid for by a black hole of bonds that have effectively committed the citizenry to moving ahead, no matter what the cost. Like Iraq, we never should have gotten in, and it’s hell to get out.
The major appeal of the monorail—that it would not become Sound Transit on stilts—has evaporated. The monorail project has spent millions of dollars in public money to spin and flack the populace with ads and consultants; they’ve steamrollered opposition; they’ve caved to big-money special interests when it has suited them. They have miscalculated their basic finances and cut back on their promises. And none of this addresses even more fundamental problems that lie ahead: How much will it cost to operate? How long will taxpayers be on the hook? Is the proposed public/private partnership to design, build, operate, and maintain the system really in the public interest in the long term?
Those doubts, of course, are based on the assumption that the system that’s actually being designed can actually be built, and if it’s built it will actually function. Some prospective members of the monorail’s bidding teams—most notably structural engineer John Magnusson, last week—are starting to express serious doubts that the project is doable within the budget and time constraints. Certainly, a kind of independent review of the overall plan is called for, one disconnected from both the political and bidding process.
One of the Monorail’s appealing aspects was that while the voters got to approve the general plan, there were some checks and balances built in. If it wasn’t as promised, if it was undoable or too expensive or hit unanticipated turbulence, we could pull the plug before the bonds were sold, before the course was irreversible. The Seattle City Council was the ultimate check and balance; or the people could take action if the council wouldn’t (and some are taking action, through the initiative process).
But, like George Bush, who won by a single electoral vote, the narrowly approved monorail and its supporters have acted as if they have a mandate. Instead of engineering a terrific system, they have built a bureaucratic juggernaut, a kind of warmer, fuzzier version of Sound Transit, glossed by its origins in the mind of a cuddly cabbie who thought the whole idea was cool.
Many of our elected officials have doubts, too, but are keeping quiet about them, hoping the project collapses under its own weight. They don’t want to take a hit for being against the People’s Boondoggle as long as the monorail concept remains attractive to many Seattleites. Who wants to be opposed to the Little Engine That Could? A more apt analogy might be the fable about the emperor with no clothes. Only we have it in reverse: Most of our garbed leaders walk in silence, afraid to point out that the citizens are buck naked and about to be many bucks poorer.
This refusal of the city’s political leadership to tackle the monorail head-on is dangerous pandering. Despite being a historic landmark, they have sanctioned the destruction of the original Alweg monorail for one that is arguably inferior; they have ignored the advice and pleadings of the design commission that has raised red flags all along the route and begged the monorail project to slow down and reconsider; they have looked the other way as view corridors are scheduled to be ruined by tracks and sky bridges in violation of long-standing policies, as important public spaces like Seattle Center’s fountain park are being sacrificed for shortcuts. Every objection has been met with an exceptional willingness to keep the project moving no matter what, even as the project itself morphs to the point where it is scaled back, compromised, slower, more convoluted, and likely more expensive than we yet know.
Big transportation projects like the monorail usually start out well, and then devils emerge from the details. The system as planned now is less good than the one drawn on the slate of our imaginations; as it progresses, it will become more problematic and more expensive. Despite good-faith efforts to reduce expenses and stay within budget, costs will balloon farther down the track. The monorail isn’t going to get prettier or less expensive with age.
That being the case, it’s time to cut our losses. Let’s prove that the monorail is really better than Sound Transit and stop it while we still can.
